Captain Nemo


Kevin J. Anderson - 2002
    But what if Nemo was a real man, whose actual life was more fantastic and adventurous than all the fictions it inspired?Here is the tale of Andre Nemo, the man behind the myth. The free-spirited and inventive son of a French shipbuilder, Nemo goes to sea as a cabin boy, faces marauding pirates and bloodthirsty sharks, is marooned for years on a mysterious island, battles prehistoric monsters long believed extinct, journeys to the center of the Earth, balloons across Africa, escapes from Arab slavers, discovers the fabled city of Timbuktu, endures a plague of locusts, survives the Charge of the Light Brigade, tends to the wounded with Florence Nightingale, is pressed into service by the ruthless Robert the Conqueror, and, ultimately, wages war on War itself as the captain of his greatest creation: the legendary underwater vessel known as the Nautilus.Captain Nemo is also the story of Nemo’s childhood friend, Jules Verne, who would bestow immortality upon the captain’s exploits, and of the remarkable woman they both loved to the very end.

The New Voices of Science Fiction


Hannu RajaniemiSuzanne Palmer - 2019
    Even though your worker bots have staged a mutiny, and your tour guide speaks only in memes, you can always sell your native language if you need some extra cash.The avant-garde of science fiction have arrived in this space-age sequel to the 2018 award-winning anthology, The New Voices of Fantasy. In The New Voices of Science Fiction you'll find the rising stars of the last five years: Rebecca Roanhorse, Amal El-Mohtar, Sam J. Miller, E. Lily Yu, Rich Larson, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Sarah Pinsker, Alice Sola Kim, Darcie Little Badger, Nino Cipri, S. Qiouyi Lu, Kelly Robson, Suzanne Palmer, and more. Their extraordinary stories have been hand-selected by cutting-edge author Hannu Rajaniemi (The Quantum Thief) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (Invaders).So go ahead, join the starship revolution. The new kids have already hacked the AI.--back coverContents:- Introduction by Jacob Weisman- Foreword by Hannu Rajaniemi- Openness (2016) by Alexander Weinstein- The Shape of My Name (2015) by Nino Cipri- Utopia, LOL? (2017) by Jamie Wahls- Mother Tongues (2018) by S. Qiouyi Lu- In the Sharing Place (2018) by David Erik Nelson- A Series of Steaks (2017) by Vina Jie-Min Prasad- The Secret Life of Bots (2017) by Suzanne Palmer- Ice (2015) by Rich Larson- One Hour, Every Seven Years (2017) by Alice Sola Kim- Toppers (2016) by Jason Sanford- Tender Loving Plastics (2018) by Amman Sabet- Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™ (2017) by Rebecca Roanhorse- Strange Waters (2018) by Samantha Mills- Calved (2015) by Sam J. Miller- The Need for Air (2018) by Lettie Prell- Robo-Liopleurodon! (2018) by Darcie Little Badger- The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi (2019) by E. Lily Yu- Madeleine (2015) by Amal El-Mohtar- Our Lady of the Open Road (2015) by Sarah Pinsker- A Study in Oils (2018) by Kelly Robson

The Cobweb


Neal Stephenson - 1996
    In this now-classic political thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a savagely witty, chillingly topical tale set in the tense moments of the Gulf War. When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college town--all the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what it's producing is a very nasty bug.Navigating a plot that leads from his own backyard to Washington, D.C., to the Gulf, where his Army Reservist wife has been called to duty, Banks realizes he may be the only person who can stop the wholesale slaughtering of thousands of Americans. It's a lesson in foreign policy he'll never forget.

Armor


John Steakley - 1984
    The military sci-fi classic in a striking new packageFelix is an Earth soldier, encased in special body armor designed to withstand Earth's most implacable enemy-a bioengineered, insectoid alien horde. But Felix is also equipped with internal mechanisms that enable him, and his fellow soldiers, to survive battle situations that would destroy a man's mind.This is a remarkable novel of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat--and how the strength of the human spirit can be the greatest armor of all.

Fear the Sky


Stephen Moss - 2014
    Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships’ huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out. Their technology is vastly superior to ours, and they know they cannot possibly lose the coming conflict. But they, like us, have found no answer to the destructive force of the atom, and they have no intention of facing the onslaught of our primitive nuclear arsenal, or the devastation it would wreak on the planet they crave. So they have flung out an advanced party in front of them, hidden within one of the countless asteroids randomly roaming the void. They do not want us, they want our planet. Their Agents are arriving.

Steampunk (Steampunk, #1)


Jeff VanderMeerJoseph E. Lake - 2008
    Blaylock"The Giving Mouth" by Ian R. MacLeod "A Sun in the Attic" by Mary Gentle "The God-Clown is Near" by Jay Lake"The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel" by Joe R. Lansdale"The Selene Gardening Society" by Molly Brown"Seventy-Two Letters" by Ted Chiang"The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance" by Michael Chabon"Victoria" by Paul Di Filippo"Reflected Light" by Rachel E. Pollock"Minutes of the Last Meeting" by Stepan Chapman"Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Coast" by Neal Stephenson"The Steam-Driven Time Machine: A Pop Culture Survey" by Rick Klaw"The Essential Sequential Steampunk: A Modest Survey of the Genre within the Comic Book Medium" by Bill Baker

Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die


Ryan NorthArryn Diaz - 2010
    It didn't give you the date and it didn't give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die." Machine of Death tells thirty-four different stories about people who know how they will die. Prepare to have your tears jerked, your spine tingled, your funny bone tickled, your mind blown, your pulse quickened, or your heart warmed. Or better yet, simply prepare to be surprised. Because even when people do have perfect knowledge of the future, there's no telling exactly how things will turn out. Featuring stories by: * Randall Munroe* Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw* Tom Francis* Camille Alexa* Erin McKean* James L. Sutter* Douglas J. Lane* and many others.Featuring illustrations by: * Kate Beaton* Kazu Kibuishi* Aaron Diaz* Jeffrey Brown* Scott C.* Roger Langridge* Karl Kerschl* Cameron Stewart* and many others

I Am Legend and Other Stories


Richard Matheson - 1954
    Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood.By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?I am legend --Buried talents --The near departed --Prey --Witch war --Dance of the dead --Dress of white silk --Mad house --The funeral --From shadowed places --Person to person.

War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches


Kevin J. AndersonDaniel Keys Moran - 1996
    One of the most startlingly original and entertaining SF anthology concepts in years, perfectly preserving the spirit of H. G. Wells's classic. H. G. Wells's immortal novel The War of the Worlds describes an invasion from Mars through the fictional dispatches of a London newspaper reporter. Yet we have been able to see only one segment of the global catastrophe - until now. Here is the Martian invasion that might have been, from the Earthlings best prepared to tell the tale. Besides the struggle in England, the reporter mentions similar battles taking place all over the planet. From Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba to the Dowager Empress in China, we see our fellow humans encounter the Martian menace through the eyes of science fiction luminaries: --In Providence, Rhode Island, an eight-year-old H. P. Lovecraft bravely seeks communion with an alien intelligence - and a return to his long-lost home; --In Russia, a letter by Count Leo Tolstoy describes the coming of the ultimate revolution; --In a dark woods outside of Zurich, a heroic Albert Einstein finds himself trapped inside a Martian craft, where survival itself is relative; --In Amherst, Massachussetts, Emily Dickinson leaves poetic evidence that she encountered the Martians eleven years after her death; --In Paris, a young artist named Pablo Picasso is inspired by the Martian carnage to create his most shocking and disturbing masterpiece.Contents:**(H. G. Wells): Foreword (War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches) • essay by H. G. Wells*(Teddy Roosevelt): The Roosevelt Dispatches [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Mike Resnick*(Percival Lowell): Canals in the Sand [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Kevin J. Anderson*(Dowager Empress of China): Foreign Devils [War of the Worlds] (1996) / novelette by Walter Jon Williams*(Pablo Picasso): Blue Period [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Daniel Marcus*(Henry James): The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James [War of the Worlds] (1996) / novelette by Robert Silverberg*(Winston Churchill and H. Rider Haggard): The True Tale of the Final Battle of Umslopogaas the Zulu [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Janet Berliner*(Texas Rangers): Night of the Cooters [War of the Worlds] (1987) / shortstory by Howard Waldrop*(Albert Einstein): Determinism and the Martian War, with Relativistic Corrections [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Doug Beason*(Rudyard Kipling): Soldier of the Queen [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Barbara Hambly*(Edgar Rice Burroughs): Mars: The Home Front [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by George Alec Effinger*(Joseph Pulitzer): A Letter from St. Louis [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Allen Steele*(Leo Tolstoy): Resurrection [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Mark W. Tiedemann*(Jules Verne): Paris Conquers All [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Gregory Benford and David Brin*(H. P. Lovecraft): To Mars and Providence [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Don Webb*(Mark Twain): Roughing It During the Martian Invasion [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Daniel Keys Moran and Jodi Moran*(Joseph Conrad): To See the World End [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by M. Shayne Bell*(Jack London): After a Lean Winter [War of the Worlds] (1996) / novelette by Dave Wolverton*(Emily Dickinson): The Soul Selects Her Own Society: Invasion and Repulsion: A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Wellsian Perspective [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Connie Willis**(Jules Verne): Afterword: Retrospective (War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches) (1996) • essay by Gregory Benford and David Brin..